Imagine the Groundhog Day scenario happens to you. You have, say, a perfectly regular Monday - whatever that means to you - go to sleep, and at 7:00 in the morning time loops back and you end up at 7:00 at Monday morning again. This keeps happening over and over, whatever you do, and you don't know when or if it's going to stop. Everything happens exactly the same way every day, except for your own actions and their consequences. (Butterfly effects can happen but not very chaotically - every change can be fairly unambiguously attributed to something that you did differently.)

What would you do?

(Please feel free to move this to another forum - such as General or Serious Business - if you think it better fits there.)

In the short run:First I'll try to find out whether the day always resets once I go to sleep or once it's 7:00 and whether it's even possible to stay awake until then (if it's powerful enough to reset the universe except for my conciousness, it's probably powerful enough to make me go to sleep). If it's the third, try and find out if any drugs or other brain-altering stuff helps.And during the day, my behaviour won't change much: most days will be sitting in front of my computer and slacking off, others will be doing something unusual. Let's just hope it's a sunny day.

In the long run:First I'll go insane from not knowing whether this will be the last iteration of the loop (and consequently whether it matters if I become psychopath), then I'll become a psychopath anyway. Because when nothing matters and will be reset in a day, every experience will eventually be welcome. Even coma/suicide, just to find out whether the looping will end.Eventually, I'll set off a nuclear winter just for kicks (finding out how to launch warheads within a day is just a matter of time). Try to find out whether the reset mechanism is capable enough to recover from that.

Oh and somewhere along the run I'll contact every Phil in Pittsburgh to help him through the day, contact every Kyon in Japan to help him with his homework, contact every Doctor to help them with punching a rock, kill the Omega, tell Data the escape maneuvre, et cetera et cetera.And just in case it's really a groundhog day scenario, I'll try to "better my life for one day" and see if it works.

First, I would read every book on my bookshelf. Then, read every book in every campus library. Then, read every book on library genesis. Then, read the entire internet, including the wayback machine. Next, I would take every piece of encrypted traffic I could get my hands on and break it via pure brute force and patience (except for one-time pads, of course). Then I would do a brute force search to see which currently unsolved problems in mathematics have a solution which is at most twenty pages long. At this point the obvious next goal would be to solve a few board games, but this would probably end up being a bit unsatisfying: while I could probably manage to work out who wins and by how much, and what to do for the first few moves, as well as an example of a perfectly played game, I would probably not ever be able to memorize the entire winning strategy (I am assuming here that even if I manage to make myself into a superintelligent cyborg during the loop, as soon as the next day comes around I will revert to ordinary human intelligence).

After that disappointment, I would get bored enough to try to solve physics, which presumably is a win condition: if I understand how the universe works, then in particular I understand how the loop works, so I can finally start exploiting it properly.

I second notzeb about Mother of Learning being the best ever Groundhog Day scenario story. Though it's more like a Groundhog-Month in his case. Which makes for a better story, since it allows for a lot more development each iteration.

The problem with looping every day is that there's just a lot you can't do in a day. Could you travel to the other side of the world in a day? Perhaps, but you'd be exhausted by the time you got there. That's no fun.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

In a Groundhog Day scenario, one of the first things I'd do is sink some time into my video-game backlog - though I'd want more than a day for a number of them, so in a 24 hour loop, that wouldn't last terribly long. I'd also work on my people skills - both being able to perform controlled experiments, and being able to do extreme things without long-term consequences would make it much easier to learn - particularly near the beginning of a loop where there hasn't been as much opportunity for ripple effects yet.

Longer-term, it gets harder to predict - after a number of times around the loop, I hope I'd have changed - depending on how things change, I'm liable to come up with different goals than if I just plan something today.

There are also some key questions to settle before getting carried away with experimentation:

1) Do I have any idea how the loop happened, or how it will end?2) (before doing anything risky): How confident am I that there will be a next loop each time? (another reason to start out with minor things rather than going wild immediately)3) Is there any sign of anyone else remembering things from loop to loop? (again, a reason to start out cautiously - if my only changes are minor ones, then unexpected changes will stand out more)

Over the longer term, I'd definitely look into astronomy to see if I can find a boundary to the effect - does the moon stay in the same phase? Are the stars fixed? etc.

I'm not going to bother to even try to "fix" it. Why would I? Living forever without aging, and getting to try alternative events sounds amazing.

The amount of skills I could learn, books I could enjoy, and so on, probably extends far beyond the end of the planet in real time. At which point, I'd likely be such a significantly different person that I don't know what I'd do then.

I do not think I would try significant risk of death things until I discovered by unfortunate accident if death reset the loop or not.

Solve physics, medicine, break RSA, build a quantum computer. It would be difficult to do this all in a one day reset period, but if I retain memory it should be possible (given I have an eternity).

Go up to a girl and prove to her I'm stuck in a loop; tell her a whole lot of stuff about herself I've learned through interrogation or whatever, and then passively tell her "oh, by the way, we made love last cycle." That should take care of any impulses.

Learn everything there is to know about everything. Find a way to allow objects to persist through multiple cycles.

Build an army of unstoppable robotic military forces and use them to scare the governments of the world into submission, end all modern day conflicts, stabilize the climate.

Find a way to extend the loop period. Colonize other planets. Make a world of equal opportunity for everyone.

Make myself and all other humans immortal. Explore further into the universe. Use the loop mechanism to create faster-than-light travel if possible. Extend the loop to cover billions of years just to make sure everything works out. Once I have it right, end the loop.

After the initial experimenting phase and figuring out that it really happens again and again and isn't something I have to solve in a limited number of loops. Well I would probably alternate between massive amounts of media cosumption (between ebooks, anime and manga I will be occupied for quite a while but not being able to wait for sequels to come out or keep a list of books I read would be irritating) and in between I would try to get some learning done. Learn to play flute and guitar since I have them at hand. Learn programming stuff. Plot a few stories, I can't write anything but I can remember plot outlines and ideas. If I can motivate myself learn physics, biology. Maybe some sports related skills. Maybe some hacking since after finding a weakness or a password reusing it takes less time. In between I would sometimes investigate the loop but after the initial phase probably only half hearted. I guess I might do some illegal stuff for kicks once I am convinced that it won't suddenly and or some dangerous stuff. But at some point I would get bored with being stuck and spent more time on escaping.

If I ̀can't figure it out=> more learning (including skills that take forever especially without a teacher) and more reading, but I would also try starting to learn magic. After all I am in a time loop so supernatural stuff exists. I would probably start with meditation and branch out from there.

One question that becomes increasingly relevant as the loop continues is what the limits of my memory are - do I end up having to forget things learned in earlier loops (or before the loop started) in order to learn new things, or can I keep learning stuff indefinitely? And what about physical skills that are largely muscle-memory? Death and injury reset, but does fitness? If I try studying a martial art, do my trained reflexes reset every loop?

Since you mentioned it starts on a Monday, I bet it would take me a few days to even notice.I'm really not that consistent a person; some mornings I get to work by 7:45, other days not until about 9. And I'm always forgetting what day it is, unless it's Friday like today. (It IS Friday, right?) Unless I happened to look at the news (which isn't really that likely) then it might take me a few days.